We are here to provide inspiration and help share well tried and tested garden ideas, used by professional garden designers

MyGardenSchool, the rapidly growing online horticulture and garden design school has launched its first Garden Design Course for beginners. For only £480 (a fraction the price of most garden design courses), MyGardenSchool is opening up the idea that anyone can design their own garden, wherever you are in the world. The garden design course is bookable from now and students can start their courses from mid October onwards (an optimum time of year to plan your design).

Hilary Thomas is an acclaimed garden designer, author and lecturer, and has already been teaching planting design with MyGardenSchool since it started so knows the ropes well. Hilary commented: “I love this way of teaching as it means I can teach students all over the world. We’ve known for a long time that there are many many people out there globally who have exciting and creative garden ideas, who love their homes and gardens, but don’t know where to start when it comes to designing their own garden. They’re not in the market for hiring top garden designers, but would like to have a go themselves. " We are here to provide inspiration and help share well tried and tested garden ideas, used by professional garden designers " that most people wouldn’t normally get access to. I find it inspiring and satisfying marking the students work and discussing their ideas with them in the online classrooms; helping them make their garden ideas become a reality.”

This new eight week beginner’s garden design course takes you through the various stages of planning a garden. It begins with Hilary getting you to look at the patterns that are all around you both in nature and in architecture. You then learn how to design by creating patterns on a grid that evolves from the dimensions of the house.

You journey through the various stages in the design process and finally refine your garden design theme, drawing it to scale, and creating a preliminary garden layout plan. You will learn how to assess a site, the soil and the surroundings and how to measure a site and draw up a site survey plan through her video lectures.
You will also learn about the range of hard landscape materials and how to select ones that are appropriate for the particular site. Hilary will help you consider the addition of features such as a pergola or water and where to site a garden shed. Hedges, trees and areas of planting are also indicated on the plan. At the end of the course you should have the skills that will enable you to have a go at designing your own or someone else’s garden.

The video lectures from Hilary are accompanied by 8 assignments which help you reach the stage you want to with your design and Hilary herself will be on hand throughout your course to answer your questions and help you develop your ideas.

Elspeth Briscoe, Founder, MyGardenSchool commented: “This course comes hot on the heels of our planting course for enthusiasts with Piet Oudolf and Dr Noel Kingsbury, which went viral and had record sales in mid August within a 12 hour period. We’re clearly seeing pent up demand for online courses from experts in garden design and horticulture who many people can’t usually access like Hilary Thomas, Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury.

Briscoe continued: “Not only does MyGardenSchool connect experts with beginners through to enthusiasts globally, but we make learning online enjoyable. Briscoe commented: “80% of students drop out of traditional online learning courses. We’ve developed a unique community based classroom where it’s fun and motivating to learn with experts you trust – MyGardenSchool courses have an 80% completion rate. We also encourage people to visit our gardening community where you can get your gardening questions answered, sometimes by world experts, for free!”

About MyGardenSchool
MyGardenSchool is the global online destination to learn about gardening, horticulture and garden design. Students can learn from gardening experts and peers alike about how to do absolutely everything in the garden from keeping bees, landscaping, design, growing vegetables, building treehouses or growing the perfect roses. And everything in between. All of our tutors are outstanding in their field (and gardens), being accomplished gardeners and acclaimed gardening writers. Gardening courses are of varying lengths, and include video tutorials, together with course notes and assignments assessed by your tutor. You also get to chat to your tutor online, as well as your classmates, in the "virtual classroom." What’s more – you can now ask questions on gardening in the MyGardenSchool community for free. Check out our course pages here: (http://www.my-garden-school.com/courses/)

MyGardenSchool is the online gardening school where students can get personal contact from world experts on garden design and horticulture. All of our tutors are accomplished horticulturists, designers and acclaimed gardening writers.